The present invention relates to machines for preparing and dispensing documents relating to financial transactions, such as money orders. A variety of machines of this type have already been proposed or are in use.
These machines possess a number of inherent limitations. Among these limitations are the inability to be efficiently supervised and controlled from a location remote from the machine, the inability of such machine to except various forms of payment, limitations relating to the nature and form of the data, text and graphics that can be printed, and the limited ability of these machines to monitor their own operation.
In addition, the machines that have already been proposed or are in use are capable of preparing only a single type of document and cannot be adapted to the preparation of other types of documents.